We are currently in Nicoya, in the center of the (surprise) Nicoyan Peninsula, where we spent the night.
Yesterday we drove to Samara, which is another surf town on the Gold Coast. Ethel wanted to check it out, but we ran into a problem – we could not find a reasonably priced hotel room with a coffee pot in the room, and all of the hotels didn’t have restaurant coffee until at least 7 AM, by which time we’ve usually been up for at least two hours.
So we drove back to Nicoya and bought a coffee pot.
By the time we did this, she decided that she didn’t want to go back to Samara just yet, so we got a hotel room here. And this morning, after reflection, she’s decided that she’s ready to go check out the Central Coast, so we’re driving to Jaco today.
Jaco is larger than Tamarindo, and more developed. It’s got a lot of high rises and hotels – apparently all of the traffic from San Jose comes through here. It’s greener and cooler than the Gold Coast, but also wetter in the rainy season.
I don’t know if she’s checking this out as a possible residence area, or just visiting to see more of the country. I’ve stopped asking most of those questions. The answers are never definite anyway; she seems to be in some sort of quantal state which is neither yes or no on anything.
For all I know, we may wind up back in Tamarindo making an offer, or we might wind up on a plane to Bermuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Bonaire, or some other destination that starts with a “B”. I’m actually okay with all this; now is the time to spend money and time. Our friends Jerry and Judy are staying at the Dog House with Abby and Juneau, we’re already down in the tropics, my financial advisor seems to be making me money faster than I can spend it, and the whole time I’m here, my house is increasing in value in the craziest market I’ve ever heard of. We might as well just travel around as much as we wish, and see what we want to see.
I’ve tried to get Ethel to check out the Brazilian or Argentinian beaches – who knows? She might like ’em – but so far, she seems disinterested. But, why not go see? Maybe we could learn Portuguese faster than Spanish or maybe I should really be a gaucho on the pampas instead of a surfer on the beach.
If I had an online presence outside of this diary, I might open a pool on “where will the Pucketts wind up?” but I left Facebook the last time the crazy meter hit the red line, and I left DRS when they finally just got a little too – well, the only way I know to say it is that the demographic has changed over the years, and the folks who are left seem to me to be a bit homogenous – and my values are not congruent with the seeming consensus, to the point that it’s obvious that some of them really dislike me.*
So now my life is being lived face to face, and the largest groups I see are at meetings and at church. I’ve never had this little social interaction, because before I joined DRS, I was at school until I was working in a office.
So while my world is getting bigger and bigger, my social life is getting smaller and smaller. But that also means that some things are getting more precious. I believe I can work with those circumstances.
*earlier, this paragraph read differently – I expressed non-charitable thoughts and opinions. My apologies to anyone who read it before the update – although, of course, they aren’t reading this now, so the implementation of any amends is pretty faulty 🙂